What to keep, and for how long

The export habit

Once a year, in January, for the year just ended:

1. Export the mileage log to CSV. Not a screenshot. A file.
2. Export each platform's annual earnings summary.
3. Save the 1099s as PDFs.
4. Photograph or scan the receipt folder.
5. Put all of it in one folder named for the tax year.
6. Store it in two places: cloud storage and one other.

Twenty minutes, once a year. It converts records that depend on a subscription, an account and a device into records that depend on nothing.

"The app has it" is not a retention strategy. It is true only while the app exists, your subscription is current, your account is intact and the export still works. Records you cannot retrieve are records you do not have. The end-of-year checklist.

What each record is for

The mileage log substantiates the largest deduction most gig drivers take, and it is the one the IRS describes wanting made at or near the time of the trip. A reconstruction is weaker; a reconstruction with no supporting evidence is weaker still. What a log has to contain.

Odometer photographs establish total annual miles, which is what makes business use expressible as a share of total use. Ten seconds each, on 1 January and 31 December.

Platform summaries are what you check the 1099s against. Forms are issued with wrong figures, and your own contemporaneous totals are the reference. What to do if your 1099 is wrong.

Receipts for anything deducted in addition to the standard mileage rate: parking, tolls, equipment, bags, the business share of phone. Parking, tolls and what else you can deduct. · Your phone and plan.

Bank statements corroborate the earnings and are the fallback when a platform's records are unavailable, which happens when accounts are deactivated.

Digital is fine, and better

Legible digital copies are generally acceptable, and they are more durable than thermal receipt paper, which fades to blank within a couple of years in a glovebox.

Photograph receipts at the point of purchase, into one folder. Not later, not into a pile. The habit is the whole system, and it is a two-second habit.

The periods, plainly

The IRS publishes the periods of limitation and the circumstances that extend them. The short version:

• Generally three years from the date the return was filed.
• Longer in specific situations the IRS describes, including where income was substantially understated or a return was not filed.
• Employment tax records have their own period.
• Records relating to property are kept until the period of limitations expires for the year in which the property is disposed of, which for a vehicle means keeping the records past the sale.

Read the IRS page rather than a summary of it, including this one, because the circumstances that extend a period are the ones where it matters.

And keep the small stuff for seven years anyway. A folder of PDFs costs nothing to store and removes the entire question.

If you are asked

Provide what you have, organised, and be straightforward about what you do not.

A driver with a contemporaneous log, annual exports and odometer photographs is in a completely different position from one reconstructing a year from memory, and the difference was created by twenty minutes of work each January.

What happens if the IRS questions your mileage. · What to do if you did not track your miles. · Schedule C for gig drivers.

This page describes the general rules, not your situation. Anything unusual belongs with a tax professional.

Questions and answers